by Paloma Meir
He stared down at her, an unreadable expression on his face.
“You know, you’re right Danny. They probably are my friends. I’m so stuck with what’s comfortable... Veronica, Carolina, Theodora. They’ve all made new friends. I always feel so different from the girls at my school. It’s as if they’re much older, or I’m more mature.” She closed the laptop. “They have so many interests like the penguins, but all of their boyfriend problems? You wouldn’t believe how they dissect every communication. My real friends were never like that. It all seems so middle school. I’ll try though Danny.” She stood up and wrapped her arms around him.
“I’m going to head back to the dorm.” I stood up. “I need my clothes, Zelda. I promise to wash them when I get back.”
“No you can’t go. Veronica left this morning to meet her father in New York.” Her voice and eyes trailed off as Danny unwrapped himself from her and went into their room. “Please don’t go...”
I knew I should comfort her, but that was it. Veronica was on my mind. I was angry with myself for how I had treated her. I didn’t understand why I had gone after her as if she were the opposing team in a championship game, or why I had even gone up to her room and opened up something that would have been better left unacknowledged.
“I was with her last night, and I wasn’t fair to her.” I sat back down in the chair and knew I wasn’t going anywhere.
“This is just like the Prism Project. You’re all wound up and not making sense. You’re staying with me.” She walked around the table and took my face in her hands. “I’m going to take a shower now and then we’ll go back to your dorm and get your computer. You can do your paper here.”
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yes.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek before standing up. “You’ll finish your paper. I’ll crochet and make the final arrangements. What am I going to do with all of this furniture, and my whole life here?”
“Zelda stop.” I took her hand as she tried to walk to her room, “Final arrangements sounds like a funeral. You don’t have to do this. He didn’t mean it the way you heard it.”
“He does speak rather plainly doesn’t he? Either way, he’s right. He always is.”
She went into her room and closed the door behind her. I folded up the bedding, tucked away the pillows, and decided to stay in Danny's pajamas. There wasn’t an actual reason for Zelda and me to head back to my dorm. I could access my work from one of the many laptops they had lying around.
After about an hour, I gave up on either one of them coming out of the bedroom. I opened up the laptop to check on the remote feed from the Early Universe lab to see what all of my friends referred to as the lights, but was in fact the calculations for the radiation of the Big Bang.
Zelda was right, the closer we got to the light source the more I lost time with my life. My uniform of the khakis and her black sweater did free up my mind. My repetitive diet of yogurt, black beans and apples kept my energy at an even line. My long hair was easy to push behind my ears and forget about. In the light of day, I found it hard to believe I even had the focus to have gone after Veronica. What was done was done, I thought with an actual pang in my chest.
I glanced across the table at Zelda’s pile of school brochures. I picked up the one for her textile program that was run out of the University of Madrid and opened it up to read the same hyperbolic language that one reads in all of those pamphlets. I tossed it back on the table, logged out of the lab, and searched for the safety information on a student review page.
I looked over my shoulder a few times. Zelda wouldn’t appreciate me checking up on her program for that specific bit of information. The room clear, I read the reviews. The program was safe, beyond safe, fit for an actual princess, or so claimed one reviewer who had roomed with one from a region that no longer existed.
I deleted the webpage history and laughed about how easy it had been for Zelda to sign up for a program that cost twice as much as my semester’s tuition. A simple number on plastic card could open the world to her. If she were sitting beside me, I would have tweaked her delicate nose.
Another hour passed before they came out of the bedroom holding hands and their faces full of smiles though Zelda’s eyes were red and her cheeks tear stained. Danny was fully dressed, saying he had to go meet some friends for rowing on the Charles River. He invited me along. I declined. I didn't want to leave Zelda. Still in her bathrobe, hair unbrushed, she remained in her sadness.
He kissed her good-bye and reminded her of what would be best for her to eat for lunch and promised to be back by dinner. She turned up the thermostat with a dramatic shiver as he closed the door behind him. She smiled as I laughed at her gesture and said we should move back to the sofa and rebuild the bed for warmth.
And there we sat, napped and did our work for the next three days. Danny coming and going, making us food, taking her away at night to sleep in their room. I worked on my Neutrino paper, taking breaks to view the live feed of the ever expanding Universe showing Zelda the lights. I explained in very simple terms that we were viewing the radiance from the Big Bang, how the rays had been traveling for over thirteen billion years. She instinctively understood the importance and asked me every so often to put my paper aside so we could view the constantly updating graphic display again.
She would put her head on my shoulder as she crocheted away, her hands shaky from caffeine. Every couple of hours she would put away her knitting and open up the computer to “make the final arrangements”. She would tear up as she organized the movers and transfer of their possessions to a large storage space in Los Angeles.
I searched for the words to soothe her turbulent mind of the rash decision she felt duty bound to go through with. Danny didn’t seem too happy about their plan either. I stayed out of it. Every couple had their struggle, and this was theirs.
Looking back I wonder if we would have done anything differently if we had known events were being put into play that were going to derail all of us. I’ve never liked to question the past, the things that were all ready set in stone, but I’m human and sometimes I do it against my better judgment. I think that Danny would have but who knows? It’s not a question I ever asked him.
Chapter Seven
Marianne and I had spent the last day of our winter break at the Griffith Park Observatory. I had left my phone at home. I opened the door to my room to see my mobile buzzing away on my bed. There were close to a dozen messages from Zelda, each text shorter and more demanding finally ending in the strict order to “come over right now”.
We had been to big family-style going away dinner for her the night before at The Ivy. I had given her a gift of a lavender filled eye mask for her flight and left her with promises to write letters. Her idea not mine because texting really would have been easier, but I never liked to say no to her.
“Marianne would you mind if I ran down to Zelda’s? She’s panicking about something.” I reread the texts to see exactly what the problem was. “I think the zipper is stuck on her carry-on bag,” I laughed.
“The movie starts in an hour. Okay, do you want me to go with you?” Her turn to laugh.
“Ha-ha, it will only take fifteen or twenty minutes.” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. “It’s not so bad anymore. The two of you looked like you were having a friendly conversation last night. She didn’t ignore you. Progress.”
“Four years after we break up, she finally accepts me.” She sat down on my bed. “It was funny, she kept telling me how perfect Santa Cruz was, and how I should never leave it… ever.”
Marianne had gotten into UC Santa Cruz, a small miracle considering her grades and class assignments before she met me.
“They just got back from their drive up the coast. She probably liked it up there.” I couldn’t imagine her liking it with the way the ocean beat down on the beach the way it did and the hippie vibe. Zelda was a city girl.
“That’s what I thought until she changed the subject t
o graduate schools. She let me know all the ones in Boston other than yours were overrated and I should, she said this at least three times, stay in Santa Cruz forever. I mentioned Harvard, and she said no 'Harvard has seen better days' and nodded her head as if...”
“We’ll finish this later. I’ll be right back. Don’t go downstairs or my mother will trap you in conversation, and we’ll miss the movie.” I ran out the door, laughing down the stairs and all the way to Zelda's house.
Her front door was cracked open. I walked inside while saying her name to make my presence known. Anthony was running up the stairs with a girl dressed not much differently than Marianne dressed when I had met her. I shouted out hello, and asked where Zelda was. He pointed back to her room without bothering to answer me, eager to get the girl into his room. High five for Anthony.
I stopped in the hallway to watch Zelda pace back and forth while texting. She had an exasperated expression on her face and threw her phone on the bed and shoved a box with her foot towards the door.
“Zelda, what’s wrong?” I asked as I made my way down the hallway.
“Why has it taken you so long? Nobody cares that I’m leaving. I’ve been texting you all day. My bag is stuck. Danny left this morning, so he wouldn’t be tired for his first day back at school. Can you believe he did that? Why couldn’t he be tired for one day? And now Anthony wants my room, and I have to pack up all of my things and send them to my storage unit. I won’t have a home anymore. Nobody cares.” She threw her hands up in the air.
“Zelda could you put one of your robes on?” I hadn’t noticed in the hallway, but she was wearing a long t-shirt that must have been washed hundreds of times because it was transparent. It was too much even for her. “Here, I’ll help you with your bag.” I made a move to pick it up, but she continued with her hysterics distracting me.
“Why? It’s too hot in here. Anthony keeps turning the heat up.” She pushed past me to the doorway and yelled out “Anthony, turn down the heat.” She turned very quickly to me. “He can’t hear me. That’s why he shouldn’t have my room. It’s too cut off. No one can hear you down here. I don’t even know how they heard Danny and me that one time... Never mind. Anthony isn’t like how he used to be. He’s always getting into trouble. They should put him in the guesthouse.”
“You’re not making any sense. The guesthouse is across from the pool. He’ll be even...”
“You know the worst part, Serge? You won’t even believe this.” She moved back to her bed and folded a sweater, “My lipstick. I ordered the color a month ago. I can’t believe they did this to me.” She threw the sweater back on the bed and turned to face me. I was having problems not laughing at this point.
“They sent me the wrong color. It’s pale pink like I wanted, but it’s a warm pink, not the cool pink. I can’t wear warm colors Serge. Look at my skin. I would look like a clown. Can you believe they did that to me? I’m going to have to travel across the world homeless with the wrong lipstick.” She screamed, back to waving her arms, her ridiculous t-shirt lifting up to lengths shorter than one of her mini-skirts. “I’m just not going to wear lipstick.”
I thought of Carolina telling me how Danny had tapped her shoulders making her fall backwards all those years ago as she stood ranting about her inconsequential problems. I lifted my arms up, pointed my fingers and poked her very lightly on the shoulders. She fell onto her bed, and I jumped on top of her, shushing her.
“Zelda, calm down,” I allowed myself to laugh. “You don’t need to be so nervous. You’re going to Spain. You don’t need to be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she yelled while thrashing around beneath me.
“Really? Your lipstick is the problem?” I ran my hand through her hair and decided to be serious with her and not mock her make-up problems. “You’ll be safe,” I paused overwhelmed by the beauty of her face, the large dark eyes, the delicate rounded tip of her nose, the defined cheekbones that almost had a masculine quality, and her lips the same color and shape as mine.
“I’ve never been alone before.” Her body relaxed under mine as she turned her head away.
“You’re not going to be alone. You’ll be with your friends and busy with your fabrics.” I moved her head back, so she was looking at me.
“What if I get scared again?” She moved her head away, “I haven’t had any problems in at least a year but what if...”
“You’ll take your breaths like you always do, and then you’ll be okay again.”
“What if it gets really bad? What if I can’t be alone?” she whispered.
“Then you’ll call Danny, and he’ll go get you.” Not ideal, but true.
“You don’t understand. I don’t want him to have to save me.”
“Then I’ll come and get you.” I calculated in my head. I had a little over sixteen thousand dollars in my bank account saved up from summer jobs and part-time tutoring in Boston. I assumed I could find a round trip ticket for less than eight hundred dollars. I could stay in her room. Food couldn’t be that much around the University. I got excited as if I were planning a trip, and not going to help a friend. “That would be great. I’ve never been to Europe. We could get a Eurail Pass and travel around. Head up to Cern, see the LHC. Every summer a group from school go for the internship, but I always have to work. The particle accelerator...” I stopped talking because she was laughing.
“I don’t want anyone to have to come and get me.” She moved her hand across my face, and I realized that I had the beginnings of an erection and rolled off of her. “All my therapy, Danny making all of my decisions. Sometimes I feel like I can’t even think.” She rolled on top of me, not helping me with my problem. “I could send you to Cern. You don’t always have to work so hard.” She leaned up on me making me very aware of her breasts pressed against my chest. I had a full erection. I rolled her off of me and stood up and tried to think of war and famine.
“Call me whenever you want, text me all the time, okay? Anytime you feel nervous.” I ignored her offer. “Let me fix your bag, and then I have to get going. Movie with Marianne.” I picked the bag up and zipped it closed easily. “Fixed.” I turned to her door.
“Serge don’t go, wait.” She picked her purse up off the floor and took out a tiny rectangular box. “Give the lipstick to Marianne. She can wear warm colors. She’ll like it. The brand is very hard to get. It's from England, and it’s made in small batches.” She tried to it hand to me while I thought of The Battle of Okinawa.
“That’s sweet but no.” I leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, but she shook away from me.
“Give this to her.” She thrust the package into my hands. “It’s very exclusive. I want her to have it.” She was getting that wild look in her eyes again, so I took the box.
“Okay, bye Zelda.”
“I’m leaving for five months.” She grabbed my arm forcefully. “Why are you acting like this?”
I gave up and pulled her in for a hug, making sure to keep my hips far away from her. She was having it at all, pulling me very close to her and rubbing her cheek against mine.
“Serge," she lifted her face away from mine, looked into my eyes, placed her hands on my cheeks, pressed her lips against mine, and that’s how we stood for either one minute or a hundred years.
I peeled her off of me, almost mad at her and all of her innocence. I could have opened my mouth, and we would have been kissing. She was right, not much thinking going on in her head. Easier than zipping up the bag, I could have taken her to her bed, taken off her t-shirt and done things to her I didn’t even want to think about.
I looked into her eyes and wanted to reprimand her but saw nothing. She looked at me the way she always did. Everything had been my imagination. There was no lust emanating from her.
“Have a good trip. Call me. I’ll call you and don’t worry. Danny...” I didn’t know what I meant to say. I walked out her door and did not look back.
“Good-bye,” she called out.
I held up my hand, waved and ran home.
Marianne sat on the bed playing with my computer. Her plump body that had only improved with weight was hidden in her olive military style pants and oversized mustard cardigan. Her golden brown hair in two long braids, the cat eyes that looked up at me with a little smile on her face. Her hippie look I never really liked was in that moment seductive, enticing.
I let her know that we would be going to a later showing and went at her with a fury. She loved it. She liked the lipstick too.
Chapter Eight
Two weeks before graduation, I sat with Danny in a juice bar not far from his old apartment with Zelda. The day was sunny, all the colors bright again after the long winter that had seemed never ending. Even the real Bostonians whose gruffness was their signature seemed upbeat, almost happy to serve us, the transient college students.
We had played a brutal game of soccer on the BU campus. My knees were scabbing up as I sat drinking my ginger beet juice with Danny. The South American crew led by my roommate Arturo didn’t play the way we did, and we liked it that way.